h the darkness, with her living helm of ink-black
hair. She was talking about the magpies' nests, which are so difficult
to steal, and she dragged him along with her. Then he heard the gentle
murmur of the Viorne in the distance, the chirping of the belated
grasshoppers, and the blowing of the breeze among the poplars in
the meadows of Sainte-Claire. Ah, how they used to run! How well he
remembered it! She had learnt to swim in a fortnight. She was a plucky
girl. She had only had one great fault: she was inclined to pilfering.
But he would have cured her of that. Then the thought of their first
embraces brought him back to the narrow path. They had always ended by
returning to that nook. He fancied he could hear the gipsy girl's song
dying away, the creaking of the last shutters, the solemn striking of
the clocks. Then the hour of separation came, and Miette climbed the
wall again and threw him a kiss. And he saw her no more. Emotion choked
him at the thought: he would never see her again--never!

"When you're ready," jeered the one-eyed man; "come, choose your place."

Silvere took a few more steps. He was approaching the end of the path,
and could see nothing but a strip of sky in which the rust-coloured
light was fading away. Here had he spent his life for two years past.
The slow approach of death added an ineffable charm to this pathway
which had so long served as a lovers' walk. He loitered, bidding a long
and lingering farewell to all he loved; the grass, the timber, the stone
of the old wall, all those things into which Miette had breathed life.
And again his thoughts wandered. They were waiting till they should be
old enough to marry: Aunt Dide would remain with them. Ah! if they had
fled far away, very far away, to some unknown village, where the
scamps of the Faubourg would no longer have been able to come and cast
Chantegreil's crime in his daughter's face. What peaceful bliss! They
would have opened a wheelwright's workshop beside some high road. No
doubt, he cared little for his ambitions now; he no longer thought
of coachmaking, of carriages with broad varnished panels as shiny as
mirrors. In the stupor of his despair he could not remember why his
dream of bliss would never come to pass. Why did he not go away with
Miette and aunt Dide? Then as he racked his memory, he heard the sharp
crackling of a fusillade; he saw a standard fall before him, its staff
broken and its folds drooping like the wings of a b